Page 22 of No Cap

We’d all learned to pick locks when we were fifteen and sneaking out of the house to go drink and fuck girls in high school. We’d had to learn to be really fucking good at it, too—the lock picking, not the drinking and fucking girls—because our parents were cops. Sneaking around a bunch of cops who knew everything we did, and when we did it, wasn’t easy.

But we’d accomplished it anyway.

Our sisters were much nicer to our parents in high school.

Then they’d both flown the coop, Addison for the Air Force and Ande for nursing school, then as a flight medic.

When Addison had died four years ago, our lives had been irrevocably changed, and not a single day passed when we didn’t miss the hell out of her.

Dealing with suicide was hard.

That was why when I had to tell anyone about their loved ones doing the same thing, it broke my heart a little bit each time.

My sister, Addison, had suffered at the hands of someone who was supposed to love her. A man we hadn’t even known was her husband until Addison had taken her life then left Ande a journal written in their own secret code that only she would be able to read.

Luckily, the man who helped put my sister into the ground had thought he could play with fire and not get burned. Ande’s now-husband, Keene, had caught Addison’s husband trying to hurt Ande when she’d found out about Addison’s abuse, and Keene had made sure that the douchebag I refused to acknowledge with his name would spend the rest of his life in prison.

Funny enough, Keene’s best friend, Autry, who worked at the circus with him, had caught the douchebag and beat him up so bad that he was no longer right in the head.

Honestly, I was sort of glad that Autry and Keene had kept me out of the punishment and subsequent man hunt. I would’ve been obligated to stop the beating, and then the douchebag would be in a lot better position to beg for forgiveness.

The douchebag deserved nothing but the worst for the rest of his life.

“What has you scowling like that?” Atlas, Auden’s twin, asked as he rolled up between us, snatching up a snack-sized Twizzler. “You look like you’re about to commit murder.”

I glanced up to see him staring at me, not Auden who was scowling about his snacks being gone.

Seeing no point in lying about why I was ‘murderous,’ I said, “I was thinking about Addie.”

“Ahh,” Atlas said, understanding covering his face. “I had one of those moments myself today.”

We all did.

It was normal.

At least, that was what our therapist friend—Jonathan Davy, who was the therapist for the police department—had said when he asked me how I was holding up, and I told him I wanted to murder everyone who ever abused another human being.

“Back to the matter at hand,” Quaid said. “Anyone else want to volunteer to work tonight? Pay’s fuckin’ great.”

“I get paid?” I asked, a gleam in my eyes.

I was currently in the process of building a house out in the middle of nowhere. I could use all the money I could get.

The commute to work was fuckin’ awful from the new place, but I got to pee off the front porch with no one around to tell me I couldn’t.

Honestly, it was like a breath of fresh air.

Though, getting called out at two in the morning for a murder fucking sucked when you had to drive thirty minutes to get there.

Luckily, almost all of my callouts happened at night when the roads weren’t as congested.

“How much is the pay?” Atlas asked as he reached for a snack-sized Snicker that time.

“Enough that it’ll be worth coming in,” Quaid said. “You going to check on your house today?”

Atlas scratched his head, a frown on his face.

All of us were currently building in the same area our sister and Keene had built. My house and Atlas’s were the first to get started, and the rest were set to take place shortly after ours. The framer crew had already started on Atlas’s.